Charter captain catches tuna he tagged 16 years ago

Al Anderson, 75, a Rhode Island charter boat captain, has been taking people fishing for nearly half a century.

For most of that time, he’s taken every opportunity available to tag and release fish — a practice he began even before regulatory agencies and scientists had organized sophisticated tagging systems to learn more about different species.

He’s so devoted to the effort that he’s kept track of exactly how many fish he’s tagged in his long career.

“Get this,” he says. “I just exceeded 60,000.”

This is a story about just one of those fish. It was probably inevitable, but Anderson recently hauled in the same fish twice — 16 years apart.